Have you ever taken your car into a repair shop or the dealership for some routine or time-stamped maintenance and glossed over the list of services the technicians performed? While many of these services are self-explanatory, trying to figure out the difference between tire balance vs. alignment isn't easy.
While wheel alignments and balances can help your car handle better, prevent uneven tread wear and make your ride smoother, they are very different services. Let's look closer at them and why they're important.
What Is Wheel Balancing?
Wheel balancing is the process of adding weights to a vehicle's wheels to correct uneven weight distribution. It is designed to ensure that the wheels and tires are properly balanced.
Balancing your wheels ensures that your tire tread wears more evenly and can help prevent shaking and vibrations at higher speeds. If you drive on unbalanced wheels, the vehicle won't handle as well, you can damage parts of your suspension and your vehicle may have worse fuel efficiency.
Symptoms of Imbalanced Wheels
You can usually tell when it's time for service. The most common symptoms of imbalanced wheels are:
- Steering wheel, seat or floor vibrations above 45 MPH
- Uneven tire wear
- Reduced fuel efficiency
- Less-responsive handling
- Damage to suspension
Wheels can lose their balance for several reasons, including:
- Hitting curbs or driving on rough roads can cause the weights on your wheels to fall off.
- Aggressive driving can cause uneven wear and flat spots on your tires, which changes the weight distribution on the assembly.
- Improperly installed tires may deflate and throw the balance off.
- Damaged or warped rims can lead to underinflated tires that wear unevenly.
Checking your tires and wheels for damage and making sure that your vehicle's tires are properly inflated regularly can help you identify a balance problem sooner.
How Balancing Works
A technician will remove wheel assembly from your vehicle and place it onto a wheel balancing machine to perform a wheel balance. They'll remove any existing weights and then use the machine to spin the assembly. The machine will show the technician where the assembly is unbalanced so they can add new weights to those areas.
Depending on the wheel's style or finish, the technician may add clip-on weights to the rim or use stick-on weights that attach to the inner part of the wheel.
What Is Wheel Alignment?
Wheel alignment is a service designed to ensure that the wheels on a vehicle are aligned with the components of the suspension and steering systems. Proper alignment keeps the wheel and tire assemblies positioned correctly in relation to the road and each other.
Even though it's called a wheel alignment, the tire and wheel assembly isn't changed. Instead, the suspension is adjusted to optimize the tire's contact with the road, improve steering stability and reduce uneven tire wear.
Symptoms of Misaligned Wheels
Much like imbalanced wheels, you may be able to tell when your wheels are misaligned. An improperly aligned vehicle may have some of the following symptoms:
- The vehicle pulls to the right or left.
- The steering wheel is cocked to one side when driving straight.
- There's uneven tire wear.
- You notice steering wheel vibration.
Alignment can be thrown off by anything that can affect a vehicle's suspension, including:
- Driving aggressively
- Running over potholes, rough roads or curbs
- Not maintaining suspension components (springs, shocks, ball joints and other parts)
- Lifting or lowering your vehicle without updating or adjusting suspension parts
- Wear and tear on the suspension
How Alignment Works
An alignment is a series of adjustments to your suspension that will address issues preventing your tires from maintaining proper contact with the road. The three types of alignment a technician will check and adjust are:
- Camber: When looking at the tires from the front of the vehicle, the camber is the inward or outward angle of the tire. If not aligned properly, positive or negative camber can add wear on the tire's center.
- Toe: The toe alignment is the position of the tires and wheels when the steering wheel is straight. Proper alignment means they are both facing straight forward. If the toe is off, it can lead to extra inner or outer wear on the tire's edges.
- Caster: This is the angle of the steering components as they meet your wheel. If the angle is out of alignment, it can negatively impact how the vehicle corners and steers, similar to what happens when a shopping cart wheel doesn't work properly.
During an alignment, the technician will check that these alignments are set to factory recommendations while also noting any problems that may have occurred due to improper alignment.
Because the suspension affects alignment, technicians may need to repair one or more of the components that make up your vehicle's suspension system. While some elements can be adjusted, like the shock absorbers, you may need to replace others if they are damaged.
Key Differences Between Wheel Balance and Alignment
Alignments and balances help your car ride more smoothly and can help your tires last longer, but there are some critical differences between them: